One Night
by vodka straight
Summary: "One night ... of not trying so hard." How things played out between Gretchen Trot and Andrew Brown in "My Funny Valentine". Rated R for a semi-detailed sextual encounter. .


Title: One Night  
  
"One night ... of not trying so hard."  
  
Even Andy knew what would happen now. He knew. It had been a while, but it's a feeling that you don't forget; that feeling of everything lining up, of everything sliding into place, of clicking as it connected. Two people, for a few seconds, feeling the same thing, moving the same way, knowing nothing but alignment.   
  
He suddenly remembered one night after Julia and his lovemaking she had laid next to him, her head rested on his chest, and had told him that Ephraim had asked her when you knew to kiss someone. Andy hadn't said so, but at the time he found it rather funny that he son would ask that kind of question. He was only eleven back then, and wasn't the type of boy, Andy had thought, to think about such things. Andy had asked Julia what she'd told him. She looked up at Andy and smiled. "I said that he'd know. He didn't believe me, but that was my story and I stuck to it." Andy had known she was right then, and he knew she was right now. Oh yes, he knew what was coming next. What he didn't know was if he could take it.   
  
Gretchen was kind. She leaned in slowly, very slowly, as if every half-inch was a question that he could refuse; she kept that eye contact, that communicative eye contact that was half of the whole thing. Her eyes were sleepy and happy and knowing, and her thin lips were parted and anticipant. Andy didn't move. He didn't lean in. And it wasn't until later that he decided he must have tilted his head just a little to accommodate her, more out of habit than decision.  
  
When he felt the first kiss, the tiny, warm, soft kiss to his slightly parted upper lip for maybe a second and a half, he didn't move; he didn't respond to her touch at all, because he knew it was a question. It was a beautiful, breathtaking, flooding question that dipped him in a sudden huge feeling of loving Gretchen, but Andy wasn't sixteen anymore. He knew that wasn't his brain talking, or even his heart; he knew that right away, but still ... still it was a question. He knew he could answer right now just by the look he gave her. But he had been asking for it himself, hadn't he? They were both adults, and he knew that they would soon be mature, consenting adults, but he still felt escape was possible right here, for these few seconds. But he didn't want escape.   
  
This was so much different, he realized, than it had ever been. Being an adult man, over fifty, on a date and about to get laid almost definitely ... it felt completely different. There was something dirty in saying, "getting laid", for one thing, something childish and perverted. But he didn't want to call it making love, because that felt wrong in a completely different way. Plus, when he had been dating, even dating in his twenties, one tender, timid kiss didn't mean squat. It didn't mean that he would even get to touch her tits, as his thought process used to go. But now ... that one kiss, and he knew. He knew they weren't fooling around. He knew this was it, and he wanted it. He missed it. There was something about the closeness of it, the intimacy and the knowing of it, there was something he greatly missed. And as much as he would like to tell himself that he missed it with Julia, and even though he did, he had to admit that he also just missed it. The act itself. It was comforting.   
  
The most he did was let his eyes dart up to meet hers for a moment, and he couldn't tell himself if his glance had been warm or cold, quiet or screaming, secretive or blank. But it was enough. They both leaned in and kissed again, a completely different kiss. There was more evidence that they weren't sixteen; Andy didn't open his mouth much, he didn't throw his tongue out as though that was what kissing was defined by. He let his lips move slowly, he allowed her tongue to gently enter and skim the edges his mouth, and then he met hers with his. Suddenly Andy had never been so ... so anything but lonely.   
  
They kissed like that, slow, questioning, tactile and evocative for a few more minutes by the fireside. He had his hand in her hair and his left hand on the side of her stomach, and she had one hand on the side of his stomach and one on his thigh, but Andy didn't move and grab the way he had when he was a teen. He knew what was coming. He didn't need to rush for it or reach for it. It would come. And it would be better in it's own time.  
  
After a few minutes, Gretchen pulled back slightly, and they're faces nuzzled softly, and her touch meant so much to him, just her touch alone. Her bright, shinning eyes darting up to his in a dazzling, intense, intent way. He felt that lovely tightness in the base of his throat and that prickling warmness in his chest that meant physical contact and physical affection making him temporarily in love. It was almost like some kind of high; it was amazing.   
  
Gretchen kissed the side of his neck, leaned back, looked him firmly in the eyes for a few seconds, and stood, taking his hand and his eye contact with her. Andy stood after her and allowed her to lead him into the trailer.   
  
There was no wild struggle to continue kissing her and remove her clothes at once. Gretchen allowed Andy to shut the door as she turned off the light, and then she removed her shirt. Second came the bra, another thing not like a teen; his girlfriends of college and high school always removed their pants after their shirt. After her bra, and the pale, simple curves of her breasts lay against her chest unencumbered, she took Andy's hand and placed it on her left breast. He watched her eyes as she undid his belt. He reached down slowly and undid her jeans, doing nothing else to her but stroking her breast and watching her eyes in the dark. She was stunningly beautiful, he realized. She had always been cute and attractive, but she was so stunningly beautiful now, in a way that he would only really see in the moments before sex.   
  
Andy moved his hand from her breast for only a moment to remove his own shirt and then replaced it, and then she slid her jeans off easily, a moment or two after his trousers, and her long, slim legs slipped out of them. She wore simple, white cotton underwear. He slowly removed it until it was down on her thighs, and she removed it from there. She leaned back onto the bed, sliding backwards so that she was lying on her back.   
  
He began kissing her neck, and a soft moan issued from her and Andy liked it in exactly the same way he had when he was sixteen.   
  
He had learned a long time ago that quick and hard was not the way to go. Gretchen moaned loudly, and he let his mouth close over her bottom lip. Her hands were in his hair, running through it slowly, calmly, pleasantly. Another feeling that made the hair on the back of your neck stand.   
  
Andy couldn't believe how beautiful the curve of her hips was. It was so perfect in relation to her body... it all felt so right. He just couldn't believe how right it felt to him to be doing this. How wonderful and filling and whole. How complete.   
  
Gretchen moved herself to straddle him. He lifted himself off her for a moment and looked down at her; she was sweating slightly, eyes glazed and happy. He watched her face carefully, trying to put it all inside his memory.   
  
Andy felt a sudden panic as he realized that he was slipping back into old habit; he was making love to Gretchen in exactly the same way he had to Julia. That suddenly felt sad, and sick, and desperate; he felt like he was trying to recreate Julia in Gretchen, and he felt a panic in that. In panicky desperation he sped up slightly. Gretchen moaned suddenly and loudly, but in a way that Andy knew wasn't pleasure, and as he felt a huge wave of almost stifling guilt sweep him she leaned up and, kissing him softly and nipping at his ear whispered, "It's okay. It's okay." He slowed himself carefully and began to kiss her again.  
  
"Mmmm," she breathed, and he felt her breath on his chest.   
  
He moaned in honest pleasure and ran his hands up and down her curving sides slowly in the dark blue light of what was left Valentine's Day, and he felt wonderful and complete again, and he felt as if the wish he'd asked for had been fulfilled in a way he never could have dreamed.   
  
***  
  
They had fallen asleep after. They had both come, rather intensely for Andy at least, and had both felt extremely happy and extremely warm and extremely tired. They had slid underneath the blankets and slept quietly, not facing one another, not touching one another but perhaps her leg slightly brushing his, or his hand barely touching the small of her back. They hadn't slept for more than half an hour when Andy woke. He lay in the small trailer, completely and intensely aware of the naked woman next to him, the dark, the smallness of the room, the tightness of the air.   
  
And suddenly it could have been Julia beside him. He felt as though if he just didn't turn and face her, if he just didn't roll over and face her, or crane his neck around, than it certainly could be Julia, he could certainly make himself feel that way, make himself believe that. He could do it easily. He was doing it, as he lay there in the dark; lay there in the dark with his dead wife.  
  
Andy shook himself physically, something like a short, self-inflicted, severe seizure. Julia-no, no Gretchen-stirred behind him, and he shivered. But it was the kind of shiver that made him want to throw the blankets off, not hug them to him. But he couldn't move. He couldn't move because suddenly there was a ghost in the room, and he was terrified.   
  
He had brought her back somehow. She was here, in the room, and she was sad and mad and disappointed and he wanted her to go, oh please god just go and let me be alone ...  
  
He had used Gretchen. It wasn't in the traditional sense, Andy knew, but all the same he had used her. He had used her to bring himself closer, somehow, to his dead wife. He had used her to stifle his loneliness. He had used her to clear his brain, to make it easier for him to breath, to make him feel new. And it had worked until now. Now he felt none of those things, and that meant of course that he had used her for nothing at all, and now that was just what he was left with.   
  
She meant nothing to him. Not in the way that this night would imply. She was beautiful and cold and untouchable to him still. She was separate. Andy had never slept with anyone so separate. Perhaps, in her own way, she had used him too.  
  
But she was right here. He couldn't help but know that half the reason this had happened was because she was right here, on Valentine's Day, when he needed to be touched and she needed to be touched, and he needed to feel loved and she needed to feel loved. When he needed to feel not alone, and when she needed to be not alone. And that was where they differed. They were both still alone, lying on their separate sides of the bed, living in their separate lies, dreaming of their separate endings. The difference there was that one was living the real ending. They were both alone, and Andy thought that maybe he was the only one who really understood that, who really understood that they had been alone always: from the beginning to the end and everywhere in between.   
  
Andy got up quickly in one swoop, not caring if he woke Gretchen or not, just knowing that he had to get out, get out of this tiny room, this haunted room, this airless room. Andy doubted that there was enough oxygen in the room to light a candle, and he had to get out.   
  
He started hurriedly putting his clothes back on, rushing like a child afraid of the dark. He flipped on a small light by the bedside, again not worried about waking Gretchen. One way or the other, he would wake her before he left. Why? Because it was Valentine's Day, of course, and if you want to have a half-decent one-night-stand, well, that's how it's done. The gentlemanly way.  
  
He was almost through, just putting on his watch when he felt the bed move beneath him. He felt panic rush him, even though he knew she'd wake eventually. His eyes darted quickly, and he gathered himself, and he turned.   
  
Oh god, she was so beautiful.   
  
She sat up, the bottom sheet hugged to her naked chest, her skin smooth and soft and creamy beneath, her collarbone accented carefully, neatly. Her eyes were sleepy and half-lidded, full of moonlight.   
  
"Andy? What time is it?"  
  
He overcame her beauty, which suddenly seemed very sad to him, very lonely. Everything felt so lonely. And hollowed out. Like something had been stolen from him, but not by Gretchen. As if something had been stolen from the both of them.   
  
"Late. Listen, I've got to go; my son will be home soon, if he's not already."   
  
As he said this, Andy couldn't help thinking: 'This is how it's done. My son will be home soon. This is how it's done. We're all adults, here; we have our promises to keep, our secrets to hold, our problems to solve. We have our separate hungers to satisfy, and when we're done, we have our children to be home for. We have places to go, people to see, oh yes. Priorities. We're all adults, here. We're all adults here, and this is how it's done.'   
  
Andy felt as though he'd committed a crime.  
  
"Are you alright?" she was awake now. Andy loved how women looked when they just woke up; they didn't have on their make-up yet, but Gretchen's face was clean and warm with feeling, and her eyes were clear and bright in the late night haze. Her thin lips were bright red with the heat of waking. A sleepy, thick flush stood in her cheeks in a glowing way, and her skin was pale and powdery in the streaking moonlight.  
  
Andy nodded hurriedly. "No, I'm-I'm fine." He stuttered, and as beautiful as she was, he suddenly felt repulsed- literally repulsed -by the idea of kissing her again. But he saw that she expected it and he leaned into her and kissed her briefly and dryly. Her eyes closed and she smiled at him sleepily, and Andy thought it was a somewhat significant smile, and he felt terror creep into his heart. Terror dragging guilt behind it. "I just-- I need to go." 


End file.
